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All Site ContentRomeo and JulietAct 4Scene 3
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"shrieks like mandrakes"
Allusion
Act 4,
Scene 3
Lines 35-47

An explanation of the allusion to mandrakes in Act 4, Scene 3 of myShakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

Juliet

Or if I live, is it not very like
The horrible conceit of death and night,
Together with the terror of the place —
As in a vault, an ancient receptacle,
Where, for these many hundred years, the bones
Of all my buried ancestors are packed;                          
Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth,
Lies festering in his shroud; where, as they say,
At some hours in the night spirits resort —
Alack, alack, is it not like that I,
So early waking, what with loathsome smells,
And shrieks like mandrakes' torn out of the earth
That living mortals, hearing them, run mad —

A mandrake is a hallucinogenic plant whose roots resemble a human body. According to folklore, the plant screamed when pulled out of the ground.